How can I launch an external process from within TFS 2010 Team Build to compile Visual Basic projects

Question

I'm doing research on doing builds using TFS2010 Team Build. At the moment we are using Nant Scripting to build .NET code as well as launching external processes to build VB6 projects. We are slowly converting our VB6 over to .NET but would like to gain the benefits of automating as much as possible. How can we launch an external process to compile in Team Build to compile our VB6 projects? Is this possible? Any suggestions, etc would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Jim

Answer 1

Have a look at the InvokeProcess activity, it should be able to do what you want. For relatively simple tasks like compilation etc. it should be enough. If you need to capture output in a more detailed way (eg publish test results from external tests), you may need to write your own custom activity .

Answer 2

you can use the VB6 activity from Community TFS Build Extensions